Horses Made of Sticks
by pebblysand
Summary: We rode on horses made of sticks. Post 5x15.


**A/N:** This is sad. Like, really. Ugh, okay, anyway, many, many, many thanks to Orbythesea who taught me about chicken _pot _pie. :).

Also, title is from the song Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) by whoever sings your favorite version of it because there are just _so _many. Mine's Nancy Sinatra, if you really want to know.

* * *

**Horses Made of Sticks. **

She ignores it. Abernathy presides and Diane first chairs and she ignores it. She ignores the faint scent of bleach she breathes in; she ignores the fact that this is the last room he ever walked in, the last place his laugh has ever echoed in.

She misses the sound of his laugh. She misses the sound of his voice, the way open 'a's and 'o's fell off his lips effortlessly. She's listened to that voicemail more than a thousand times since she first heard it, she's read every email and every text he's ever sent her because she knows. Alicia knows that the way they talk, the sound of their voice is the first thing you forget, before the touch of their skin and the warmth of an embrace. It goes:

'_Alicia, I – I just wanted to thank you again about the Grants thing, they, uh, they decided to keep us for whatever odd reason –_' and there, he laughs, awkwardly, and it gets her every time. '_I, uh,_' he starts again but then, then there's the beeping sound on his end of the line and she wishes it to go away, every time she wishes it to go away. '_Oh shit,_' he says, '_that's the plumber – the pipe in my bathroom's been leaking again for days -_'

And every time it triggers her memory. A memory of her sleeping at his place and that freaking pipe that just wouldn't stop and _tap, _and_ tap, _and_ tap. _

'_I can't sleep,_' she'd sighed, pulling his pillow over her ears. He'd laughed, then, too, his hand travelling down to her arm, to her hips. '_Well, if you can't sleep…_' he'd said, amused, his skin warm and naked against hers.

She'd teased, faux-mocked his stamina with another laugh as he climbed on top of her again, under the covers. '_What are you, twenty-two?_'

'_Oh, I would argue that we're much better at this than when we were twenty-two, wouldn't you?_'

She'd gasped, then, when his mouth touched her shoulder and travelled down to her chest, stealing a nipple between his lips. His kisses continued their way down to her waistline; her breath caught in her throat when his hit her skin. '_Really?_' She'd whispered, smiling.

She'd felt him chuckle against her inner thigh, his lips inches from –

'_Really..._ _I'll show you if you want,_' he'd muttered against her.

And by that point, she'd stopped thinking about that damn pipe.

.

'_Alicia,' _it goes on,_ 'I'm sorry, I really need to take this but, uh, we'll talk, about something, later, not over the phone anyway, so, uh, yeah, I'll call you back, okay?'_

That. That also breaks her every time.

.

In court, Diane asks if she's okay – probably because she's everything but okay herself – but Alicia nods and says yes, she's fine. Alicia's always fine, Alicia's always perfect. Except, except that when they break at the end of day, she forgets the dress she's just bought for Grace under her seat. It's for a gala, in a month; it's beautiful, expensive. Green, it'll compliment her daughter's eyes, compliment her skin. She told Peter she needed to buy one for herself too. Alicia's got lots of dresses, lots of red and she just can't –

No, not yet. So, when she leaves the office she rushes back to the courthouse, pleads with the guards to let her in, tells them that it won't take long, that she just forgot something earlier, somewhere.

.

The silence strikes her when she gets in. Then, it's the fact that it doesn't _actually_ smell of bleach. It's haunted her all day long, between Diane's questions and objections, but it doesn't actually smell of bleach and she doesn't know why she thought it did.

The room is empty, the lights faint, like that night they spent arguing against and for stuffed ballot boxes. Her heels click against the floor when she enters and walks down the central aisle. The paper bag with Grace's dress is here, behind the defense table – thank God – and Alicia is about to walk out when –

She stops.

The prosecution was blocking the view this afternoon and she never got to see it.

It's not where he died, she knows. She knows because in that dreadful first week _after_, she thought she would find her answers in the facts laid out before her. Will was wounded here. Will passed out here. He woke up for a few minutes in the ambulance, chest heaving and neck bleeding out, but he died in the hospital. Between two rows of senseless curtains and a room full of doctors and nurses; his body was then left there, to be tended to later, when the flow of victims stopped requiring immediate attention. Or when Kalinda and Diane found him.

She knows the exact time his death was declared, too, but she tries to forget.

She hadn't been here since he died and Diane asked her, this morning. '_You're sure you want to do this?_' She said. It was time. It felt like time. It went well today, she thinks. They tore the government's expert testimony apart. It went well, really well.

(And she flinched at every noise she heard.)

.

She can't help but stare down at the floor, on the prosecution's side. She leans against the back of the bench and stares. She's been staring at a lot of things lately, from baseball games to client meetings to people running along the lake. She hasn't looked Peter in the eye in two months.

She starts; someone enters through one of the doors up front, rushing in. 'Ah, Mrs. Florrick,' the voice chants, distant, 'forgot something too I see? You know what? Have you seen a badge with a little turtle on it? My daughter makes them, I was wearing one this afternoon but it must have dropped.' Silence. 'Mrs Florrick?'

It's the concern in Judge Abernathy's voice that brings her back to reality. It's the realization that she hasn't even listened to what he was saying, except that she thinks of daughters and children and that day two years ago when Will'd told her he'd never really wanted kids, anyway, and why. '_Will_,' she'd said, '_you're nothing like him. You'd make a great Dad_.'

'Are you alright?' Abernathy says and she wipes her cheeks extra-quickly, pulls her bag closer to her chest.

'Yes, yes, I'm alright, sorry I just –'

'It's fine, it's the end of the day for everyone,' he says.

Awkwardly, for just an instant, he places a hand on her shoulder and she's thrown back to the way she put her hand on _his_ shoulder five years ago. He'd kissed her like he'd been wanting to do it since Georgetown. '_You've done everything you could_', she'd told him that night. He probably had. He always did.

Her hands shake a bit and she stays silent longer than she would like. The next thing Abernathy says is 'please, Mrs Florrick, take your time, don't worry. There's no rush here.'

When she looks at him, his smile is amicable but worried, probably destined to haunted souls and late dark courtroom shadows. 'I'm fine, I just - it was just empty here and I –' she breathes out, finally, 'I thought I was alone.'

I thought I was alone like he was, she wants to add. Because Will died all alone, on cold sheets and an unfamiliar bed and that, that also kills her every time. Will _loved_ people. Will thrived in crowdsand now he's all alone, in the dark, and when they closed his casket after the ceremony she kept thinking, _don't, don't close it, he didn't like small spaces, he wouldn't want to be alone. _

'You were,' Abernathy says, nodding. 'You were until I barged in, I'm sorry,'

She's horrified suddenly, she's horrified he thinks he barged in because no, it was nice and understanding and he's a _judge. _'That's not what I mean, I –'

'Mrs. Florrick, it's _alright_. Really, don't worry. Take your time. I know about Mr. Gardner, I hadn't thought –' he trails off, reconsiders, 'I'm really, deeply sorry for your loss,'

He extends a hand for her to shake and she takes it, hangs onto it for a bit too long, tries a smile. It hurts on her lips like orange juice on a cut. 'Thank you.'

'He was a great lawyer to have around. Talented, a great sense of humor.'

For a second, she allows her eyes to close, lets the silent _ache _run through her._ I know_, she wants to say. _I know_.

'I'd known him for twenty years,' is what she says instead, glancing up at him. Her voice almost breaks. She doesn't know why she says it, doesn't know if it's appropriate but it just slips out her mouth before she can think. 'We'd been to school together, Georgetown.'

He smiles. 'Georgetown, huh? My wife did her undergrad there, it's a great school, she loved it,'

'Yeah. He did, too.'

She tries not to think back. She tries not to think back. She tries not to think back. It's ridiculous; it makes her laugh.

'I smelled bleach all afternoon,' Alicia admits, finally, broken laughter in her mouth. 'I smelled bleach all afternoon because I assumed that's what it would smell like, after they spent a full week trying to clean it all up but it doesn't really smell like bleach, does it?'

Abernathy shakes his head, eyes piercing through her. 'It used to, for about a week. It stopped eventually.'

She nods. She understands. In two months, she hasn't just learnt about what happened during the shooting, she's learnt everything there was to know about everything. She's learnt that he was autopsied, that they ripped his chest open for proof they didn't need; she's learnt about what death does to the body, about rigor mortis and how cells die and how they inject chemicals to keep corpses from deteriorating before funerals. Worms are eating at him and she's researched all that, compulsively, trying to balance incomprehension with knowledge.

She just doesn't know what to do with all this, now.

'Do you want me to ask someone to stay with you a bit?'

No, Zach and Grace are waiting at home and there's chicken pot pie to make and –

'I just, I think I need to stay just a bit longer –' she admits, 'if that's fine with you, of course, I mean, I don't want to -'

Abernathy raises his palms to the ceiling, 'Don't worry, for you, I'll even tell the guard to look the other way, Alicia,'

'Thank _you._' She stresses. It's genuine. It makes her think of the way her name sounds in his mouth and how it sounded in _his_, how his hands ran against her skin and he whispered _Leesh, _in her ear, sometimes, in the middle of cold, winter nights. _Leesh _is a name that died against his lips.

'Your Honor,' she calls again a moment later, as he takes two steps back towards the door. She looks down at the floor where Will - 'You think people are scared?'

It was her first thought when she learnt about all these things she never needed to know. He must have been scared, he must have been terrified. Sometimes, he tells her so, in her dreams. On a hospital bed, looking at her, blood pouring out of his neck and he's alone, alone because she can't reach out to him and the blood is _everywhere_; it just won't stop. 'I'm scared, Alicia,' he tells her, and she wants to hug him, to tell him it's all going to be okay but she _can't. _

Sometimes, when she wakes up sweating, she wonders if maybe he didn't know, maybe he didn't understand, maybe it didn't hurt. _She's_ terrified, though, always has been. She's terrified of what's going to happen, now, terrified of a body she won't ever be able to touch and a voice she won't ever be able to hear, terrified that her memory will go, that one day, she'll be able to spend a day without thinking about him.

'I don't know,' Abernathy offers. No one does. 'I know that people who believe in something are a bit less … worried,'

She thinks about this, sometimes, too. 'He didn't believe in God. He never did. He thought,' she smiles, 'he thought all was left of us was our Wikipedia entry,'

Abernathy laughs, then, and she feels a rush of warmth go through her because Will can still make people laugh. Will's still - 'Wise man,' Abernathy says, smirking. 'But it's not about him, is it? It's about you, now, about what _you_ believe in.'

A sigh. 'I don't believe in anything either, your Honor, trust me,'

Abernathy's head shakes suddenly, vehement. 'Yes, you do. You believe in justice. We all do, in our own way. Even William Gardner, the suspended lawyer did. That's a belief he had and a belief you both shared, Mrs. Florrick.'

She stays silent, for a while, for longer than she expects. 'That's… Deep,' she says, 'I guess.' And beside the point, she wants to add. So, so, so meaningless and beside the point and Justice or the lack thereof is also what got Will shot in the first place, too, but she doesn't bring _that_ up.

'Hey,' he smiles, walking away, 'you think I got to where I am just because a bunch of liberals fell in love with my good looks?'

She laughs at that, a bit, as he waves her goodbye.

'Goodnight, Mrs. Florrick,' he says.

.

She waits until the door closes behind him to take off her shoes and sink to the floor. In a skirt, the ground is cold against her legs; she slides to the prosecution's side, sits straight where his body must have been, facing the wall to the right side of the room. He was facing left, she knows because Finn said he dragged him to the prosecution's bench and held onto him until Kalinda came so the way she sits, right now, she would have been facing him, sitting over where his chest must have been. With her hands, she caresses the ground, the wood around her.

There's no blood left. She thought there would be - murderers can never scrub everything off so why would the justice system? - but there isn't. There's just cold ground, something like marble under her fingertips. He must have been so _cold_.

She clasps her hands together across her knees, thinks of how he used to take her hand, too. How he held her hand and brushed his fingers across hers in the elevator that night, in the elevator that morning. She clasps her hands and thinks of Grace, thinks of Peter.

'Hail Mary,' she whispers, like she's been taught, before. 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.'

'Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.'

'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.'

She's silent for a while, through silent sobs and the tears that roll down her cheeks. She knows them, now, is very familiar with them, with how they come and go, every day of every week. She remembers his face, the line of his jaw and the look in his eyes, that first night when they were twenty-two.

'Bring him back,' she pleads no one in particular. 'Please, bring him back.'


End file.
